Karen Brooks TEDx Portland Talk

Notes from Karen Brooks' TEDx Portland talk on the Portland food community, and the factors that led to our unique foodie culture.


Karen Brooks
Portland Monthly / Foodie
  • While the rest of the country focused on celebrity chefs...
  • Portland’s food scene developed with no leaders. Just a crazy crew of cooks and farmers and truckers.
  • Handmade, fabulous, and cheap.
  • Portland has easy access to the best farmers and farm land.
  • We don’t have access to money.
  • We are soaked to the bone most of the year, we need to find our own rays of sunshine.
  • Our good culture is small scale, extremely local, willfully eccentric.
  • It’s not just what taste good in our stomachs, but what makes our heart feel good: craft, connection, community. feeling respected.
  • Stirling Coffee Roasters, Adam and Eric. Two coffees roasted each day. identified by home town. but also by two words that seem to define it “the chocolate peanut”.
  • Farmer Gene trucks 300 miles each week from farm to Portland to stand on concrete all day long to sell his carrots at the Portland farmer’s market.
    • “Why does these taste so good?” “Because I talk to them!”
  • David, chocolate maker.
    • made in the back of a sandwich shop.
    • happens because of community. someone is willing to rent a space for $200. other people are willing to try to sell them.
    • booming business, made possible through community.
  • Crossroads for food today
    • Obseity, manufacturing, overconsumption, underconsumption.
  • Craft, Connection, Community. -- Put these together.

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